SOURCE: Yeats, W. B. “Oscar Wilde's Last Book.” In Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, edited by John P. Frayne, pp. 202-05. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

In the following review, which was originally published in 1891, Yeats provides a mixed assessment of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories.

This review of Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, London, 1891, appeared in United Ireland, September 26, 1891.

From the beginning of their acquaintance, Yeats regarded Oscar Wilde more highly as a wit and figure of legend than as an author. He met Wilde at the soirées of William Ernest Henley, one of the first magazine editors to print Yeats's poetry. Wilde was kind to him, invited Yeats to his home for Christmas dinner (probably in 1889), and had Yeats tell fairy tales to Wilde's son, whom Yeats thoroughly frightened by mentioning a giant. Burdened by a sense of...